Return to Retailing Roots

For fourth quarter 2007, Wal-Mart ditched its George label, its attempt to widen the aisles, and its push to offer fashions that are more contemporary. Instead, the Bettonville Behemoth did what it does best: ever day low pricing. The move paid off as Wal-Mart reported strong stales.

For the next two years, this strategy will work. After that period, though, all bets are off.

Happy days are here again

Don’t Run Electricity Through My Body, Bro

Shockingly hot

At Blipverts, we enjoy listening to Grammar Girl’s podcasts because they help us (1) write better and (2) correct other people’s mistakes. Okay, the second reason represents why we like Grammar Girl. Well, that, and the girl geek thing.

In a recent podcast, Grammar Girl weighed in on the use of Taser and tase as verbs (Podcast 77: Verbification of a Noun). She settled on using tased as the verb form of the noun Taser. We disagree completely. Our logic stems from another Grammar Girl podcast.

One Stop Financial Shopping

Many ideas in business appear quite possible, reasonable, and profitable. Where others failed before them, business leaders swear they possess the knowledge to use better the resources needed to implement successfully these ideas. These often tried but never successful ideas include

• doing more with less
• cutting our way to profitability
• buying market share
• selling checking accounts and IRAs

Add Citigroup to the heap one stop financial shops, which is includes Shearson Lehman FleetBoston, Morgan Stanley, and US Bank. The failure occurs because these companies lack a key component of information: consumer behavior and consumer needs.

Can I interest you in some nice fat financing or a debit card?

HLC, not Waves, Tell the Better Story

I am a Boomer, You’re a Boomer, Wouldn’t you want to be a Boomer too?

The Boston Globe puts on its generational glasses to look at the presidential candidates. Through these thick lenses of lazy reporting, the paper lumped Barack Obama in with the Boomers. Many took umbrage at this lumping action. The Globe then asked random pundits for their definition of a generation. Similar to snowflakes, no two measurements of a generation cohort appear the same.

This lack of consistent measurement points to one of many problems for using generations as a lense for analysis and prediction.

Hang 10, Boomers!

Paying for Creativity

Major record labels continue their journey to obsolescences. They jettisoned their promotion responsibilities to MTV and Clear Channel long ago to concentrate on brand management responsibilities. The major record labels fail in their current role because they ignore their consumers to focus on sales of compact discs. Because they no longer promote their acts, the major record labels lost their ability to listen to consumers. Instead of responding to changes in the market, record labels alternately sue the pants off their consumers or turn their backs on legal (i.e., paying) services.

If they don’t buy a cd from our bland flavor of the week, then sue them the snot out of them!
On Wired’s web site, David Bryne provides some different approaches for artists but not for brand managers from the record labels. For the artiests, these approaches mean they will get paid. Also, check out David Byrne and Thom Yorke’s thoughts on music’s worth. Wired includes lots of clips too (HT: Filmoculous).

Dead Viewers Watching

The Associated Press finds that NBC’s nightly news shed half a million viewers while CBS’ lost a quarter million viewers. NBC’s and CBS’ executives blame the viewer loss on (1) summer time viewing habits, and (2) viewer’s skewed perception of their respective anchors, Brian Williams and Katie Couric. Meanwhile, the good people at ABC are popping their corks over the rankings. If you are associated with either of these three programs, then you need to refresh your resume because your numbers tell a different story.

Network news loses another viewer

Looking at Bad Intelligence

The Seattle Times’ Melissa Allison sheds some light into how companies make poor decisions. It starts with faulty intelligence design. The money quote:

Researchers explore people’s refrigerators and kitchen cabinets, and they ask them about food choices while they shop.

The fine people at the research firm, the Hartman Group, nor their clients must be familiar with the Hawthorne Effect. Pity because it more than likely explains all phenomena observed by the Hartman Group.

The Hawthorne Effect also gets consumers to stop at red lights.